Project Event Bling
Event visualization bling tools at an affordable cost
Hello!
We're V/R, a data visualization / explorables studio based out of Singapore.
We've been around 9 years, and we've done dozens of visualization and storytelling projects for clients across government, corporate, start-up, SMB, non-profits.
Project Event Bling
I am going to start this ideas pitch by talking about a project we've done for an existing events client in the visualization space.
I will then explain how I think it can be broadened to a proper product, how I see things, how it dovetails with your brief, and why working with an events company makes sense.
Live viz tool 1
We have built a bespoke solution for a client of ours in 2019, MCI consulting (an international events company).
This is a live event visualization based on real-time data input from an audience.
What you are seeing is on V/R's staging server, MCI consulting has it on their own official website, which we help administer.
Live viz tools 2
Data is all collected on live mobile survey inputs, designed specifically for the audience.
Live viz tools 3
This is a then visualized live (shown to audience) based on collected results.
You can see this here.
Live viz tools 4
Every survey has their own individual result (we collect emails). MCI sends them their own personalized results later.
You can see this here.
Live viz tools 5
- Personalizing results are an excellent way to make the event sticky for attendees.
- So far this bespoke solution has been used in events in 3 events around the world: Antwerp, Rio De Janerio and Singapore.
- Audience use QR codes to access the various links for the live events.
- There is a moderation page for the surveys (hidden to audience), so that the event organizers can tweak the data live as necessary.
- All data submitted for each event are tracked and stored. From a data perspective, data is gold and can be used for all kinds of business models.
My comments
- This is not a product. It is a repeatable service where the client calls us to update their surveys and tweak the visualization results.
- Idea: Create a self-service product where event folks can create their own surveys (templated), and then use this to run their own visualizations at events.
- There is no dashboard for analytics, and from a reporting perspective, a lot more things can be done.
Problem statement recap
- You’re a frazzled marketer already busy with day-to-day work and your CEO wants something “cool” to impress investors, partners and clients at an event.
- You don't have much resources (money or time), and yet you want a showcase that impresses.
- You also want to keep audiences sticky, track data and do reporting.
- What if you could find some self-service cloud-based tool that helps with this?
Market and opportunity recap
- Many marketers have traditionally very campaign-centric budgets. If you have a way to track data and link it back to KPIs, the value of the events shoot up.
- Help marketers by giving them something bling at an affordable cost that they can use to impress stakeholders, especially at events.
My honest thoughts
- From a visualization perspective, there are tons of tools out there. Most of them aim to solve the business intelligence / analytics portion.
- Your brief can be answered by hiring a business analyst, get them to download all the data from the various event tools used (Pigeonhole, etc.) and then chart this up using Tableau or PowerBI.
- There is no denying that BI is a huge market segment, but it is crowded with start-ups and companies.
- Beyond analytics / reporting, one missing ingredient...
My honest thoughts 2
- ... is the experience.
- Visualization for bling and storytelling is a missing component that can be leveraged.
- A lot of visualization tools are too generalized.
- So marketers look for bespoke custom solutions, because they often start from the customer experience angle.
- Reporting and analytics are of less concern until they are forced by their clients to account for them.
Another example
- This is a 3D photo visualization project for Temask for their global event in Shenzhen, China, 2018.
- Run at the large event hall, it was designed to run on self-service touchscreens and mobiles.
- Something like this could be repurposed to be a long-term networking product for many events, instead of once-off code for a client.
Example continued
- A possible product would be a networking tool: Help you find people you either knew the name (but don't know what they look like) or click on photos to find out about them.
- Filters and sorts help make this easy, all tied together by cool curated 3D visualization bling.
Pitch: Project Event Bling
- What if you take all of these lessons learnt to build a cloud-based platform to do different live visualizations, targeting the needs of a marketeer?
- Want to find out the answers to the questions in your brief? (Next event to be run, etc.)
- Ask the audience in fun, experential ways and give them back something to make the event sticky.
- Create custom forms to get visualization data, or if you use 3rd party tools, ingest it into the platform.
Ideas: Customer Experience
- Have different visualization types (for different categories), and charge marketeers a price to access viz types on the cloud-based tool.
- Visualizations are embeddable. You can run this as a standalone or embed onto your site (via iFrame). No code on your end.
- Make the visualizations continually fresh and novel by implementing new themes and styles of animation.
Ideas: Reporting / Analytics
- At the same time, of course collate the data and track analytics.
- Use visualizations to do powerful, customized reports for individual attendees who submitted data.
- Data, once collected and collated, can be useful drivers of other business opportunities.
- It will be remiss of me not to mention AI, ML when you talk about data.
Competitive analysis
- Many of the product companies for data visualization target exploratory analysis, and the market is super crowded here.
- From Tableau, to PowerBI, to dozens of start-ups out there. But relatively few target visualizations / tools for presentation.
- A few: Piktocharts, Infogram, CartoDB all target specific niches.
- Likewise, this is a niche product targeted at a specific audience.
- Strengths: Nine years of building visualizations in a studio, so we have some understanding of markets / client mindsets.
- Weaknesses: We're not from an events background. We're mainly tech specialists, with a bit of design thrown in.
- A contextual understanding of the events market is important to attack the market.
About V/R
- V/R(www.vslashr.com) is an interactive digital studio that has been around for 9 years.
- We have a track record in the explorable and visualization space and have done dozens of projects. Clients include folks like Temasek, Fortinet, BASF, etc.
- We are a technical crew. That is why clients buy us and stay with us in the first place. Here's our creds deck, gives an idea about out work.
- Beyond this pitch, if you're interested in our work, do ping us!
About V/R 2
- We already have an existing client-based business that will continue to run, irregardless of product ideas.
- But having run this company for 9 years, it may be time to take some of the dozens of projects we've done for clients and explore turning them into products to pilot.
- And for this events segment, we need the events context to make it really work.
So what do I want?
- I am interested to find long-term partners to co-create product solutions.
- Nobody has all the answers, and that's why you want to find folks who bring interesting ideas to the table.
- So if you find these ideas interesting for the events space, let's have a BD chat.
So what do I want 2?
- Validation / co-creation of product ideas with events folks.
- Understand what resources are available to help scale my company if we choose to transit from more service to product company.
- Mentorship, access to markets, tools, challenges to ideas. Funding is not likely to be a priority unless decide to scale.
- There is no go-to-market strategies / budget projections in this pitch as yet as idea validation / fit is more important.
- And anyway the OIP has already set some metrics for this challenge. So let's talk!
